O'Reilly Open Source Convention: July 26-30, 2004

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Affrus: An OS X Perl IDE  Affrus is a new IDE from Late Nite Software; Simon puts it through its paces to see how it compares to Komodo and his beloved Unix editors.   [Perl.com]

The Fight Against Spam, Part 1  Fighting spam is a battle that all Internet users must fight. In part one of this series, François Joseph de Kermadec shows you practical techniques, many of which you might have overlooked, to take back control of your email.   [MacDevCenter.com]

The Missing Digital Photography Hacks  The quest to compile compelling hacks is not something I can just turn off now that Digital Photography Hacks has hit the streets. It's an addictive process. And I admit it; I can't stop. So here are five brand-new tips for you to explore.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Integrating Xgrid into Cocoa Applications, Part 1  In this first of two articles exploring Xgrid, Drew McCormack provides you with a little background information, then moves to installation, and finishes off with a command-line script for distributing compilation using Xgrid.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Automated Web Photo Galleries with iPhoto and Perl  If iPhoto is working nicely as your digital shoebox, but you want to automate the process of creating web galleries for your own server, here's a nifty setup using Sendmail, MySQL, and Perl. Mike Schienle, who specializes in task automation for a living, shows you the system he designed for his wife, who is an avid photographer.   [MacDevCenter.com]

RAW, iPhoto, and Mac OS X  iPhoto does an excellent job of breaking digital photography's chain of pain, that is, as long as the files are JPEGs or TIFFs. That's because iPhoto does not support RAW files, at least not directly. If your current workflow depends on iPhoto, you might be feeling left out in the cold with all the current hub-bub about using RAW capture. Don't. Derrick Story shows you how to have your iPhoto and shoot RAWs, too.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Applying "Digital Hub" Concepts to Enterprise Software Design  The essence of the digital hub is that there is one entity that stores data, and many modules connected to the hub and to each other through the hub. This hub-and-spoke architecture works well to solve many business problems, where you have many users doing many different tasks based around one set of data. Adam Behringer explains how to apply these concepts to effective enterprise software design.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Basics of Offscreen Buffering  In this second installment of Elementary Computer Graphics, Michael Norton shows you how to load an art file into your video game just like you'd see on a Game Boy. These tutorials are designed for parents and other adults to share with children who have an interest in computer programming.   [MacDevCenter.com]

BBEdit: Its Unix Support Doesn't Suck Either, Part 2  In part one of this two-part series, Kevin O'Malley introduced you to BBEdit's Unix support features. Now, he shows you how to put BBEdit to work via filters, scripts, and more.   [MacDevCenter.com]

BBEdit: Its Unix Support Doesn't Suck Either, Part 1  In this first article of a two-part series, Kevin O'Malley introduces you to BBEdit's Unix support features. He also includes a nifty hack for listing the songs on your iPod, copying songs from your iPod to iTunes, and playing a song in iTunes -- all from within BBEdit.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Swaine Manor
Mad Macs and the Unshredder  Maybe Apple Computer should avoid all that nasty litigation with Apple Corps and simply change its name. How about Mad Macs? Michael Swaine thinks outside of the music box.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Unit Testing with OCUnit  Are you sure your code works -- all of it? If you make a change in one place, can you be sure you haven't broken something else? Testing frameworks can help you make sure. In this article, Jim Menard shows you how OCUnit can become part of the solution.   [MacDevCenter.com]

GarageBand for the Musical Newbie  If you're a musician, GarageBand is a much different animal than it is for those who don't play an instrument. So, can a musical newbie with a good ear, G4 laptop, and a piece of software create an interesting song? Giles Turnbull explores.   [MacDevCenter.com]

PBTOMAKE -- Xcode to Unix  Even in its early stages, Xcode shows lots of potential as the premier IDE for Mac OS X development. But what if you want to recompile that code for Unix? There's no export. Jim Schimpf shows you the utility he designed for this, called PBTOMAKE.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Component Object Model (COM) Development on Mac OS X  COM allows software components with a high potential for reuse to be shared between programs, and has been implemented on Mac OS X as part of the Core Foundation framework. Because it's commonplace in Windows development, many programmers don't know that COM works just as well on Mac OS X. Christopher Hunt shows you the ins and outs of COM on the Mac platform.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Building Applications with AppleScript and FaceSpan  How can you take advantage of AppleScript to write stand-alone Cocoa applications? Matt Neuburg, author of AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, introduces you to FaceSpan, a self-contained, program-building environment that leverages the power of AppleScript.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Virtual Book Signings  Snaggy & Nitrozac are back this week offering their brand of humor and technical know-how to the use of video conferencing technology. They've used their virtual book signing events to demonstrate the power of iSight and iChat AV, but their aim is to spark your creative juices to find other ways to apply these technologies, perhaps to connect with friends and family around the world, or perhaps for use in your own business. Snaggy & Nitrozac are the authors of The Best of the Joy of Tech.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Launchers for Mac OS X  LaunchBar is the best known Finder enhancer on the platform, but there are many noteworthy challengers, including Quicksilver. Giles Turnbull loads up an entire lot of launchers and reports.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Managing Packages on Panther with DarwinPorts  Mac OS X is rich in packaging options. One popular choice is the Debian-based Fink package management system. But another excellent option is DarwinPorts, which is explained in this article, written by the coauthor of Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Programming With Cocoa
The Cocoa Controller Layer  The controller layer is the confluence of several new and existing Cocoa technologies, including key-value coding, key-value observing, and key-value binding. In this tutorial, Mike Beam returns for a guest appearance to discuss NSController.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Results from the Second Mac DevCenter Survey  More than 1,200 Mac DevCenter readers responded to our second online survey. Here's who you are, what you like, and the directions in which you want us to go.   [MacDevCenter.com]

FileMaker-to-Oracle Migration with FmPro Migrator on Mac OS X , Part 2  FileMaker Pro 6 is a terrific database, as long as you stay within the confines of its design. In part one of this series, David Simpson provided practical migration information using FmPro Migrator on Mac OS X to automate the move from FileMaker to Oracle. Here in part two, he goes through the steps of completing a FileMaker-to-Oracle transition.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Creating Online Help with Tinderbox  Apple's online help system, Apple Help, has a dubious reputation among some Mac users, mainly because of poky performance. But Panther has improved the situation. Matt Neuburg built an online help system for a Mac application using a note-taking hypertext outliner called Tinderbox. He outlines the process in this article.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Setting Up Apple Remote Desktop  Whether you need to administer lots of computers in the workplace or the classroom, Apple Remote Desktop will make your job easier. Here's a walkthrough of its setup and basic operations.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Unix on Panther: Accessing the Internet  This excerpt from Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther introduces Unix networking: remotely accessing your Mac from other computers and copying files between computers. It also shows you how the Connect to Server capability of Terminal can make common connections a breeze once you've set them up the first time.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Dev to Dev: James Duncan Davidson Interviews Panic  The folks at Panic have been producing great software for the Mac since the System 7 days. James Duncan Davidson, author of "Running Mac OS X," interviews the Panic cofounders to discuss Cocoa, Xcode, surviving with Apple, and making it as an independent developer.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Panther, Python, and CoreGraphics  Mac OS X Panther includes many updated developer tools. Among them is an enhanced version of Python 2.3 with its own SWIG-based bindings to the CoreGraphics library. Here's a look at the capabilities of the module and examples of how to use CoreGraphics to rescale and decorate images for publication on the Web.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Are You Talking to Me? Speech on Mac OS X  Apple's recent announcement of Spoken Interface has moved speech recognition to the forefront. However, Mac OS X has included speech recognition and synthesis technologies for quite some time. In this article we delve into the often misunderstood world of talking to your Mac.   [MacDevCenter.com]

You Sexy Thing!  Just about everyone looks great behind a cursor, but the days of communicating online exclusively with text are numbered. So Snaggy and Nitrozac offer their brand of advice on how to look great on iChat AV, in spite of iSight. With tips on proper lighting, camera angles, and using the right foundation, Snaggy and Nitrozac offer more of the high-tech humor you've come to know and love in their comic and in their book, The Best of The Joy of Tech.   [MacDevCenter.com]

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